


Unfinished Symphony

by miidniight



Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [2]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dadza, Explosions, Fall of L'manburg, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mentioned TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Mild Blood, Sad Wilbur Soot, Stabbing, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, The Button TM, i'm not sure if this counts as suicide but wilbur technically asked for it, so im tagging it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27610219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miidniight/pseuds/miidniight
Summary: a very big and not blown up l'manburg...
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Philza & Wilbur Soot
Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018798
Comments: 7
Kudos: 141





	Unfinished Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> taken from wilbur's stream "smithereens" from about 1:14:16 to 1:20:19
> 
> designs are entirely based on the skins they wear in game
> 
> this doesn't exactly follow what happens, as i've changed a few things to better enhance the fic as well as done a bit of imagining for things like when wilbur and dream made their deal and to how phil found wilbur, but i hope you enjoy :)

Wilbur was happy.

At least that was what he told himself.

The war was over, Tubbo was president, and his friends - his _family_ \- were safe. A peace unlike anything anyone had seen in a long time had settled over not only L’Manburg, but all of the land. The grass looked greener and the water a little more clear, as if the universe itself was telling them that everything was good in the world.

Everything was exactly how it was meant to be.

Wilbur, however, had his doubts.

As Tubbo finished his speech, Wilbur clapped loud and hard for the boy whom he had watched grow from a sweet child that loved too hard and got stung too fast to a man, back straight and pride gleaming in his sky blue eyes and pearly white smile. The tears that stung at his eyes surprised him, and Wilbur choked on the sudden lump in his throat. 

As the cheers began to die down around him, Wilbur raised his chin to where Tubbo stood on the podium high above the crowd of enemies and allies alike and said quietly, too quietly for anyone to hear but himself, “A toast.”

He slipped through the crowd of grins and laughter, sending a small smile of his own to Eret who gave him a hearty pat on the back as Wilbur passed by. The stone switched to grass under Wilbur’s feet as he grabbed a post on the wooden fence and leapt over, landing with a small _fwump_ on the other side. While he slowly climbed the hill, Tubbo continued, voice echoing with amusement and a bashful undertone across L’Manburg.

“So, I really-I’m gonna be honest - I don’t know what a president does.”

Wilbur gave a chuckle as raucous guffaws exploded behind him. “I’ll be back,” he called out to the group, though no one answered. Eyes were not on Wilbur at the moment, no, they were on where Tubbo stood above them, glowing with hope and the promise of a future.

He walked a little further, only one thought on his mind:

Chekov’s gun.

The basic idea that nothing should be introduced into a story if you don’t plan on following through. The wars of L’Manburg would be passed down from generation to generation, Wilbur knew they would. Nothing was more enticing to children that yearned for adventure in their lives than epic tales of revolution and victory.

Wilbur had long ago decided that he was to be the villain in them.

It had started with a careless question to Tommy before the festival. Paranoia driven thoughts swirling around his head in smoke and shadows, showing him the truth of his position. Everyone had a part to play in the Story of L’Manburg, and Wilbur was the bad guy. Nothing, however, had been set in stone until Dream came to make the final deal.

It had been in the dead of night, long after Tommy had fallen fast asleep. Wilbur stood waiting in a forest clearing a little ways away from the dirt passage to Pogtopia. Dream came to him under the cover of darkness, mask pulled down and armor donning his body. The gunpowder he had gathered for Wilbur’s plan of destruction held only one condition.

“No matter what happens,” Dream had told him, voice muffled from the sinisterly simple smile that adorned his face, “L’Manburg gets destroyed. I don’t care if Schlatt wins, I don’t care if you win. I want L’Manburg gone.”

Wilbur, shocked at the time, had protested almost immediately. “Dream, I - ”

“If it isn’t,” Dream spoke over him, hand going to rest threateningly on where a sword hung innocently from a belt slung across his hips, “No one will make it out alive. Not you, not Tubbo, not Nikki, not Tommy - no one. Either way, I’ll get what I want. The question is whether or not they’ll live to see it.”

Silence heavy and thick fell over the clearing. The normal noises of the night had disappeared, as if the whole world was holding its breath awaiting Wilbur’s reply. After several beats of nothing, Dream began to turn away, mask glinting in the moonlight and nothing but conviction in his every step. 

“Wait,” Wilbur called out desperately, hand reaching for Dream’s slowly leaving figure. He paused, turning back halfway, just enough that Wilbur could catch half of his smile and one dotted eye. “I’ll do it.”

“Even if you win? You’ll give up L’Manburg?”

“Even if… even if I win.”

“Good. I’m proud of you Wilbur, you made the right choice.”

Dream’s word made Wilbur sick to his stomach. He fought against the nausea that was creeping up his throat as Dream pulled his magic trick and tossed a large bag of gunpowder at Wilbur’s feet that he had seemingly produced out of nowhere. It came with being one of the most powerful people, he supposed, as it was a magic that he had only ever seen Techno replicate.

By the time Wilbur straightened from where he had bent down to gather the bag into his arms, Dream was gone.

The hesitance he had felt upon carrying through his side of the deal had disappeared entirely as he looked around L’Manburg during Tubbo’s speech. Almost everything had been changed. Buildings and homes had been uprooted, trees cut down, the great walls demolished and turned to rubble, and Wilbur could barely recognize what had been his home underneath Schlatt’s legacy.

That was what L’Manburg was.

It wasn’t his legacy, like he had planned it to be. The city was supposed to be immortal, something that would last long past Wilbur’s time and be a reminder, a bustling, lively reminder, that freedom no matter how difficult it was to achieve could be won.

No, L’Manburg was Schlatt’s legacy - a reminder of everything Wilbur had lost and everything Schlatt had corrupted. 

By the time Wilbur reached the button room entrance, he knew what had to be done.

Using nothing but his bare hands, he removed the rocks that blocked his path, groaning with the effort of finally tugging the last one out of the way. Dusty yellow carpeting, painstakingly laid out back when Wilbur had planned for this to be an explosion of glory and his final moment met his eyes. It was soft under his shoe as he walked in slowly, one hand trailing against the rough tunnel that opened up into what Wilbur sardonically called his “Madness Room”. To anyone but himself, that was exactly what it looked like. 

Carved from the bare stone of the cliff Wilbur had built it into, the button room was not what you would call magnificent. It was small, somewhat cramped, covered from floor to ceiling in his messy, half dazed scrawl of the anthem he had created so long ago. 

_I heard there was a special place…_

Wilbur stood in front of the button, staring at it, heart torn despite knowing that L’Manburg would never truly be L’Manburg again, even with Tubbo at the helm. There would always be a stain of hate and fury splotched across it like spilled ink.

_Where men could go and emancipate…_

It was there.

It was right there.

It was a stupid _fucking_ button, all Wilbur had to do was press it.

_The brutality..._

Hand shaking like a leaf in the wind, Wilbur raised it towards the button.

This was his only option.

It would get rid of the final reminders of Schlatt.

It would keep his family _safe_.

_And tyranny of their rulers…_

“What are you doing?”

Wilbur stopped.

That voice… Wilbur hadn’t heard that voice since…

“Phil?”

Broken, shaky, cut through with pain and terror and hurt - that’s what Wilbur’s voice had been reduced to. It was a far cry from the man he had once been, but Wilbur knew there was no turning back.

“What are you doing?”

Wilbur turned frantically, eyes desperately searching for the always familiar figure. Phil had disappeared long ago, left with a kiss to his brow and a promise that if Wilbur ever needed him, he’d be there. He had, for all intents and purposes, raised Wilbur. Before Phil, there had been no one. Wilbur had been but a small child in a large forest, flinching at every sudden movement and every shadow.

Then, like a guardian angel, Phil had swooped down from above and taken Wilbur into his arms and heart, showing Wilbur what a home was.

_Well this place is real, you needn’t fret…_

“Where… where are you?”

“I’m coming.” Phil’s voice was as soft and gentle as Wilbur remembered, but there was a sadness that ached dully in every syllable, a muted pain he was doing his best to hide from Wilbur’s carefully concentrated ears. 

“I’m not-I wasn’t doing anything.” Wilbur felt the compulsion, the bone deep _need_ to defend himself from Phil, sure that he knew what his plan was - Phil always knew. “We just made Tubbo president. We-we, um, we led Tubbo to president and we, uh, we won the war! Schlatt’s gone. Schlatt’s gone, Phil. So it’s, um, it’s good.”

“Uh huh, you are… where exactly? Right now?”

Wilbur, despite the panic that was racing like a spooked horse through his veins, had to hold in a teary laugh despite himself. He recognized Phil’s tone, referred to it lovingly as his ‘dad voice’. While growing up, Wilbur had been on the receiving end of it many times, prone to causing trouble and mischief as he went off on his own even back then.

Slowly, hesitantly, and very obviously false, the words slipped off of Wilbur’s tongue. “In… L’Manbu-sort of the area? You wouldn’t know it very well. I don’t think you’ve been here, but it’s the area around L’Manburg. It’s complicated, geography and that, y’know?”

Wilbur turned and froze.

Standing there, looking no different than when Wilbur last saw him all those years ago, was - 

“Phil?”

A floppy green and white hat that Wilbur had loved to steal as a child sat on top of a shaggy blonde mop hanging low over deeply disapproving eyes and a stern frown. Arms crossed over his typical green jinbei and emerald robe, Phil looked as he had Wilbur’s whole life. It was, he supposed, one thing he could always count on never changing. Phil was everlastingly, blissfully the same.

“Mhmm,” he hummed, frown deepening, “‘In L’Manburg,’ he said.”

Wilbur stumbled over his words, stammering as Phil slowly crept closer. “This-this is L’Manburg. I… I will admit I-do… do you know what this does?” Wilbur gestured to the wooden button that rested innocently on the rough stone wall behind him.

“I do.”

“Have you heard the-the song on the walls before,” Wilbur spread his arms, looking to either side where his half mad writing was scrawled angrily, “Have you heard the song? There _was_ a special place, but it’s not there anymore.”

Phil, half exasperated, said, “It is there. You’ve just won it back, Will.”

And God, Wilbur nearly broke down into tears right then and there. Nobody but Phil had ever said his name with such utter, unconditional love pouring from every letter in brilliant shades of rosy pink and glittering gold. It had never occurred to Wilbur how much he had missed it until he had heard it fall from Phil’s mouth again.

“I’m so close to pressing this button, Phil,” Wilbur practically shouted, voice rough and strained with unshed tears, “I have been here so many times. They’re fighting-they’re fighting!”

Phil was quiet as he stared at Wilbur with an unreadable look in his eyes, and Wilbur hated the feeling that he had somehow let him down.

“And you want to blow it all up? You fought… so hard to get this land back. So hard.”

“I don’t,” a choked back sob, “I don’t even know if it works anymore. I could press it, and it might not work.”

Phil, with a heartbreakingly sad smile and an accompanying laugh, looked at Wilbur, hair falling to cover one of his calm, ocean blue eyes and quietly low enough that Wilbur had to strain to hear it, asked, “Do you really want to take that risk? There is a _lot_ of TNT potentially connected to that button.”

“There was a saying…,” Wilbur began, voice almost dreamy. “There was a saying, Phil, by a traitor once part of L’Manburg…”

_With Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, fuck Eret…_

“He had a saying, Phil…”

Wilbur turned to face the button again, head heavy with the thoughts he could never silence, the grievances he could never let go, but his hand was light, weighing less than that of a cloud, as he lifted it upwards. In slow motion, he watched as his palm came to rest gently against the small creation that would end everything Wilbur had ever hoped for

“It was never meant to be.”

He pushed down.

_A very big and not blown up L’Manburg…_

In a hushed, barely there whisper, Phil exclaimed, “Oh my God.”

The first explosion went off, destroying the wall Wilbur was facing. He felt a tug, as Phil pulled him close to his body, wings unfurled and wrapped around the both of them as a shield from any flying rocks and debris. Suddenly, Wilbur was four years old again, wrapped in soft, obsidian black feathers and a warm embrace as he was lulled to sleep.

He couldn’t help but think, _This is how I want to go._

“Will,” Phil’s desperate cry close to his ear was what finally set off Wilbur’s tears. “It’s all gone.”

They streaked down his face like twin waterfalls, forcing pained sobs from the deepest parts of his chest to burst free from his throat and make an appearance. Clinging to Phil, Wilbur’s hands fisted handfuls of Phil’s clothing, using it as an anchor amid the explosions that rocked the ground he stood on and made his ears ring.

“My L’Manburg, Phil,” Wilbur barely managed to get out around his sobs, a terribly shattered and broken smile adorning his face, “My unfinished symphony forever unfinished.”

The notes were no longer tainted by the presence of an enemy, no longer haunted him as they fell through the air in a dizzying, nauseating melody that hadn’t harmonized with the song that played unendingly through every beat of Wilbur’s heart since Schlatt had stepped foot within L’Manburg’s borders.

Wilbur pulled back from Phil’s grasp to look him in the eyes, shocked, _horrified_ blue meeting deep, chocolate brown, the flickering candle of hope long since blown out. He could see the pain in Phil’s gaze, the fear for Wilbur that kept the tears carving deep craters into his cheeks flowing. “Kill me,” he whispered hopelessly, “Phil, kill me. End this, kill me.”

If he could choose anyone, Wilbur wanted him.

With trembling fingers, Wilbur pulled a diamond sword from its sheath on his back, throwing it at the ground in the meager space between them. He saw Phil look down at it before sending his attention back to Wilbur, soundlessly shaking his head as he spread his wings wide.

“Phil, kill me, kill me. Do it, kill me. They all want you to do it. Kill me - ”

“You’re my son,” Phil screamed, voice cracking halfway through his sentence, tears of his own spilling over from where they had been resting, lining the eyes that Wilbur had grown up wishing he had, if only so some part of him would match the man who had given him everything. “No matter what you do, I can’t-I can’t - ”

“Look! Look around you! It’s gone! Just do it, Phil, do it!”

A noise Wilbur had never heard come from Phil before escaped his trembling lips, and with a breathless whimper and one smooth motion that he barely saw coming, there was a sword buried into Wilbur’s chest. It might have burned like all hell, but Wilbur couldn’t feel a thing as he gave Phil a bloody smile, stumbling towards the man that, though he had thought of him as one, he had never called his father. Phil caught Wilbur’s body as it tumbled, wails of his name bubbling from his lips. Wilbur closed his eyes, finally letting himself feel at peace.

In his mind, one last time, Wilbur sang.

_My L’Manburg…_

_My L’Manburg…_

_My L’Manburg…_

_My L’manburg…_


End file.
